Advice please on guest pc upgrade

ToejaM

ToejaM

ToejaM

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Joined
12 Jul 2011
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What I want it to do:
A guest computer to play Bad Company 2 on medium-ish or better, so its playable and you dont want to pull your eyes out. Just something thats good for a bit of drunken lanning when my mate is on leave from the navy and comes to visit.

Otherwise its sat there as a server pc for vent/couple of games/storage

So far I have:
Asus Striker II Socket 775
E5400 2.7Ghz (Not sure what overclock I can get outta this but on a quick google, 3.3ghz looks possible?)
4Gig ram 800mhz
250gig hd 7200rpm
8400 gt

I havent actually tried to run bc2 yet but I'm assuming that graphics card is going to be absolute fail?

The budget: cheap as possible ideally, so we'll see what we get thats suitable!

Secondly: second/third hand graphics card that'd be sufficient?
 
yes, the graphics card will be hopeless for BF3. a mate of mine recently replaced one of those after not being able to play dirt 2 in windowed mode on its lowest settings.

couple more questions:
what PSU do you have
what cooler do you have
what case do you have
does your RAM have tall heatsinks?

i would get something like this, depending on what bits you need to replace

YOUR BASKET
1 x OcUK GeForce GTX 460 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - Bare OEM £95.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W '80 Plus' Power Supply £45.98
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99
Total : £179.36 (includes shipping : £9.50).

obviously feel free to get something similar second hand if that would make things cheaper
 
Sorry shoulda listed more:

PSU: 500w Raidmax
Cooler: Stock intel cooler
Case: Bit of a mess, its a kandalf tower but I stripped the fans out heh so I'd have to replace them but I can do that nps
Ram: I'm using mixed at the moment, 2x xms2 (800mhz), 2x corsair dominator (1066) so they'll be running at 800mhz unless they like being overclocked to 1066, Im not even sure if the board supports that speed anyway. I think that'll cause me a problem when overclocking but I'll have to see.

You think that card is the minimum I'd need to get away with it with the other cards?

I'm glad you were thinking of bf3 because eventually itll have to play that to but for now its just badcompany 2.
 
reply in quote

ToejaMz0r said:
Sorry shoulda listed more:

PSU: 500w Raidmax
hmm, name doesnt ring any bells. i would replace unless someone can find good reviews of it

Cooler: Stock intel cooler
obviously needs an upgrade if you want to overclock

Case: Bit of a mess, its a kandalf tower but I stripped the fans out heh so I'd have to replace them but I can do that nps
looks resonably big so i dont need to worry about speccing a smaller cooler for overclocking. cable tidying isnt that important for a guest computer

Ram: I'm using mixed at the moment, 2x xms2 (800mhz), 2x corsair dominator (1066) so they'll be running at 800mhz unless they like being overclocked to 1066, Im not even sure if the board supports that speed anyway. I think that'll cause me a problem when overclocking but I'll have to see.
heatsinks arent too tall, thats all i needed to know really (didnt want it to interfere with the cooler)

I'm glad you were thinking of bf3 because eventually itll have to play that to but for now its just badcompany 2.
erm...yeah, i totally didnt misread the OP. i was thinking about the future all along :rolleyes:

You think that card is the minimum I'd need to get away with it with the other cards?
now that this idiot has read the OP correctly i'll say you could probably get away with the £50 9800GT. its still a pretty good card, but i was just going on the safe side because we still dont know the recommended specs of BF3
Click to expand...

*edit*
revised spec:

YOUR BASKET
1 x OcUK GeForce 9800 GT 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card - Bare OEM £49.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W '80 Plus' Power Supply £45.98
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99
Total : £132.47 (includes shipping : £8.75).
 
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Haha dont worry, all information is helpful for the future!

The case is a monster, space isnt an issue at all.. could probably get inside and play from there myself ;)

I was thinking around the £50 mark for a card as im not sure when I'm going to upgrade the rest in honesty.

Typical the 9800 has to be on pre-order! Want to try and get something by thursday if possible!
 
well, the 9800 should be there by friday. cant see you getting anything cheaper than that with similar performance without going second hand
 
I'm looking at ocuk and the cards around that 9800GT:

OcUK GeForce GT 430 1024MB GDDR3 Low Profile PCI-Express Graphics Card
Core: 700MHz, Memory: 1024MB 1600MHz GDDR3, Stream Processors: 96, Shader Clock: 1400MHz, PhysX/CUDA Enabled, 2 Years Warranty.
Click to expand...

OcUK GeForce GT 430 1024MB GDDR3 Low Profile PCI-Express Graphics Card
Core: 700MHz, Memory: 1024MB 1600MHz GDDR3, Stream Processors: 96, Shader Clock: 1400MHz, PhysX/CUDA Enabled, 2 Years Warranty.
Click to expand...

OcUK GeForce 9800 GT OC 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card - Bare OEM
Core: 550MHz, Memory: 512MB 1800MHz GDDR3, Stream Processors: 112, Shader Clock: 1375MHz, SLI Ready, PhysX/CUDA Enabled, 1 Year Warranty.
Click to expand...

Looking at raw power there, the 9800gt is better by: 200mhz and 16stream processors and nothing else.

From all the google results I can find people still say the 9800 is better, am I missing something crucial there? Also the others have double the actual memory.

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 6570 HM 1024MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card (11191-01-20G)
Core: 650MHz, Memory: 1024MB 1800MHz GDDR3, Stream Processors: 480, DirectX 11 Support, ATI CrossFireX Ready, ATI Eyefinity, ATI Stream, ATI Avivo HD, ATI HD3D Technology, 2 Year Warranty.
Click to expand...

Apologies if this next website isn't allowed, I only googled and come across it I've not checked if its a competitor.

** Contains competitor adverts and links **

That'd suggest the 9800 would kick the 6570's ass despite the latter having 480stream processors? :o

Edit: After using that site a few more times on different cards around the price range.. some being theoretical benchmarks (I dunno how accurate they really are) the 9800 really stamps on the other cards in that range.. I dont like to question people when they give me advice but I also dont like to be a sheep, though I really appreciate free good advice!
 
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Sorry ^^ was in a bit of a rush to post so didnt have time to thoroughly check that website out, will have to see how wrong i am when im home heh.

Anyone else with an input?
 
i would scrap a cpu cooler for now, see how you go with a small clock with stock hsf, then id use the £74 and get a 6770 (cheapest new card/minimum id buy) put £10 towards buying it, then flog dirt 3 to make some cash back. other than that id say wait until you can get on the members market. i got a 4870 for £40 dorra
 
when your talking about memory, a lot of what card you choose will be about what res you want to play at. low end cards at 1280 are great, but if you tell us your screen is 1920 x 1080 then they wont be nearly as good. Bigger res needs moar memory.
 
After looking at the website I linked, I can't see anything aside from the google ads that arnt even advertising computer components that would make that website a competitior compared to anandtech which directly links to components :)

I'm not too bothered at what resolution it plays at right now, anything over 1024 would be good I guess, the spare monitor I have goes up to 1650 I think but its a tatty scratched monitor and really only good for guest usage heh!
 
well like most will say, if you want to play bf2 and eventually bf3, its worth saving £20 extra and investing in something newer and faster, no point getting old tech now when for so little more you can get the good stuff!
 
I know I know but if I keep going.. its only 20quid more.. before I know it I'll have another rig the same as in my sig thats effectively only going to be used as a server and then a seasonal guest computer lol!
 
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